With an ever-growing number of galleries scattered around New York, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Where to begin? Here at A.i.A., we are always on the hunt for thought-provoking, clever and memorable shows that stand out in a crowded field. Below are seven shows our team of editors can't stop talking about.

Jorge Tacla at Cristin Tierney, through Dec. 10Inspired by a desert area in his native Chile, and by the 1973 military bombing of the presidential palace in Santiago, Jorge Tacla has produced several series of paintings on the themes of desolation and ruin. The works in "Altered Remains" use thin muted colors, repetitive linear figures and ambiguous perspectives to commemorate the recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and Japan.

Richard Mosse at Jack Shainman, through Dec. 23For Irish photographer Richard Mosse's new series, he traveled to war-torn Congo packing Kodak Aerochrome film, a discontinued military infrared film that turns greens into reddish pinks. The resulting large-scale images show rolling landscapes of pink grass and trees, humble huts on rugged pink terrain, and gun-toting rebel soldiers. The trippy colors render the potent scenes as absurd as war itself.

Caroline McCarthy at Parker's Box, through Dec. 24Caroline McCarthy's sad-sack Christmas tree decorated with plastic bottles, bags and other detritus is perfect for December. The garland is a string of drinking straws, one end inserted into the next, which also runs along the walls and floor of the gallery. If you've overdone it on the holiday cheer, you'll relate to the dizzying footage of camera-eye spin through the artist's studio.

Tom LaDuke at CRG, through Dec. 17In "Eyes for Voice," Los Angeles-based Tom LaDuke presents recent paintings and sculptures that are not what they seem. A feather on a sculpture stand, for instance, is utterly convincing even though it's an arrangement of thousands of fingernail clippings, while a fancy white doily turns out to be made of salt. The illusionistic games continue in the large paintings, in which three layers of photo-based images in each work coalesce in subtle harmony rather than visual cacophony.

Greg Bogin at Leo Koening, though Dec. 3New York artist Greg Bogin's hard-edge Op-Pop-inflected paintings at first seem to be throw-backs to 1960s and '70s abstraction. But in this show, with the cheeky title "all smiles . . . ," Bogin creates a kind of environmental eye candy complete with faux-mod furniture and a potted palm tree.

Joe Sola at Blackston, through Dec. 18In a laugh-out-loud and gruesome short video and in a group of small paintings and drawings, L.A. artist Joe Sola offers a skewed view of American life and the art scene. In the video, Sola plays himself as a corpse; in one painting, cops form a pyramid as though they were cheerleaders; a watercolor depicts a book titled "A Book of Ridiculous Paintings." Even if you don't always get the jokes, they're funny anyway.

Robert Kinmont at Alexander and Bonin, through Dec. 3With the feel of a pristine carpentry shop, Robert Kinmont's show "Evidence" employs natural materials (mostly wood) to convey a series of mysterious messages. Unfinished Weapon is a hollowed-out forked log full of small rocks wrapped in paper, half of which have notes written on the inside, hidden from viewers' prying eyes.